What I'm Reading

Well, I'm back home after 2 weeks at the Delaware Shore ... and that means I had plenty of time to read.

Of course, now that I'm home ... I still have plenty of time to read ... but I digress.

I'm a pretty vicious devourer of books, they help me get to sleep at night. I won't profess to reading anything too deep, but I always usually have a book going.

Mostly, I read about sports. Why? Because I'm a guy I guess, and sometimes the stories are good ones.

So, I thought I'd share some of the most recent books I polished off.

The first, was a great little book written by my favorite author ... Carl Hiaasen. For those of you who don't know, Hiaasen was an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald and is now a columnist for the paper.

He also writes crime novels that are very dark and funny. Hiaasen is pretty angry about the destruction of Florida's natural beauty by developers ... and that's a common theme in his books. I saw Hiassen speak at the Akron library recently, and he says he's a big fan of when "nature fights back" ... which is also a common theme. You may be familiar with one of his books, Strip Tease, which was made into a horrible, horrible movie. Trust me, the book is a good read.

Anyways, his most recent effort is a little different. It's called "The Downhill Lie" ... and its basically his writings on returning to the game of golf for the first time in 32 years. His goal was to shoot a better score than he did in his 20's ... and he accomplished it ... barely. It's very funny, touching in spots, and a must read for hackers like me.

I also tore through the third in a series of baseball books written by ESPN columnist Rob Neyer. This book is a little different from the others. Neyer is a big stat-geek, and I'm a fan of his blog on espn.com (subscribers only, sadly.)

Anyways, his new book is called "The Big Book of Baseball Legends." Basically, he takes some of the greatest stories told throughout baseball history ... and debunks them a bit. He does this by diving through old box scores and newspaper accounts. There are a couple good ones about Bob Feller in there ... and of course, he tackles Babe Ruth's famous "Called Shot" as well.

If you like baseball ... and the sport is full of wonderful stories ... many up to 100 years old, then you'd enjoy this book. It doesn't get real heavy into the stats side of things.

So, what's next on my reading list? Well, sitting on my nightstand right now is Jimmy Buffet's new one "Swine Not?".

Why am I gonna read this? It's Jimmy Buffett ... how can it not be a little fun and crazy. Besides, I read his first two novels and enjoyed them. Oh yeah, I'm also insanely jealous of his lifestyle.